Nail bomber's six life terms as jury rejects insanity plea

By Sue Clough, Courts Correspondent

12:00AM BST 01 Jul 2000

DAVID COPELAND, the misfit whose "pitiless contempt" for ethnic minorities and homosexuals drove him to plant nail bombs which killed three people, was given six life sentences at the Old Bailey yesterday.

David Copeland: bombings were 'my destiny'

Copeland had boasted of fooling doctors into thinking he was severely mentally ill but the jury rejected his defence of diminished responsibility. They convicted him of murdering the pregnant Andrea Dykes, 27, and her friends John Light, 32, and Nik Moore, 31, in the Soho bombing in April last year. Relatives of the dead, sitting with maimed and scarred victims, cheered.

Copeland had been a member of the far-Right British National Party and at the time of the bombings was a "unit leader" of the National Socialist Movement, an offshoot of Combat 18, which claimed Copeland's first bombing, in Brixton. Scotland Yard is convinced that Copeland told the truth when he said he worked alone. Copeland said of the neo-Nazis he met: "I wouldn't trust any of those idiots. They are just a bunch of yobs."

The Recorder of London, Judge Michael Hyam, told Copeland, whose avowed intention was to start a race war, that "anyone who has heard the facts of this case will be appalled and horrified at the atrocity of your crimes. The evidence shows that you were motivated to do as you did by virulent hatred and pitiless contempt for other people.

"You set out to kill, to maim and to cause terror in the community and that is what you did. Nothing can excuse or justify the evil you have done and certainly not the abhorrent views which you have embraced." Copeland was given a life sentence for each of the murders and for causing explosions in Brixton, Brick Lane and the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho.

He had admitted planting the bombs made from fireworks and packed with 1,500 nails. As well as the dead, 139 people were injured in the three explosions, many losing eyes and limbs. The Crown Prosecution Service would not accept his plea of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility through schizophrenia.

The aftermath of the nail bomb explosion in Brick Lane, London

After hearing evidence from six defence psychiatrists and Dr Philip Joseph for the prosecution, the jury deciced Copeland knew what he was doing when he set out to cause, in his words, "mayhem, chaos, damage . . . to spread fear, resentment and hatred through this country". Copeland will begin his sentence in Broadmoor top security hospital where he is being treated for a psychotic illness.

If and when his condition improves he will be transferred to prison where the time he serves will be decided by the Home Secretary on the recommendation of the judge. Copeland claimed the bombings were "my destiny", citing "political reasons. I am a Nazi, I admit it. I believe in a ruling master race, I believe in race and country first with the white race as the master race and Aryan domination of the world."

Doctors told the court Copeland had described "being controlled by God when carrying out the bombings". But Nigel Sweeney, QC, prosecuting, suggested Copeland only got the idea of God's hand in his carnage once he was arrested and talked to other prisoners.